We are announcing a bug squashing period, starting now, and ending14 Dec 2005, 11:59 CET. Squashing a bug gets you a certain number ofpoints (depending mostly on triviality and severity). At the end ofthe three weeks, the 25 bug squashers with the highest score shallreceive a copy of my book, The Debian System [1], donated by thepublisher. If this turns out to be a success, we'lllather-rinse-repeat sometime soon.

Bug squashing is to be done according to the rules listed on thewiki [2]. In particular, everyone is expected to make proper use ofusertags to communicate to others that s/he is working ona particular bug [3]. If you are working on a bug, you are expectedto send status updates to the bug report at least once in four days,or someone else may announce the intent to lock the bug and take itover after 24 hours. Fixing a bug also involves augmenting the bugreport with any relevant information as you go along, and testingthe fix with which you came up.

Points will be given to those whose contributions fix a bug. A bugwill be considered fixed if a patch addressing the problem has beensent to the BTS and the package's maintainer has not vetoed thepatch within five days. Please do not actually close bugs in the BTS(unless you really know what you are doing). Points will only beawarded to patches for bugs which have been reported before thisannouncement (but you are, of course, welcome to fix any bug — ifit's obvious you aren't trying to cheat and you are otherwise veryactively fixing bugs, you may even get points for those too).

After submitting a patch to the BTS, please send a short note tobook-bsp ät pobox.madduck.net with the bug number in the subject,and from the email address you used to interact with the BTS. In themessage, list any contributors who have helped with the bug, as wellas an approximation of the time each of you spent on fixing thisbug. Also, document how you have tested your patch.

The amount of points to be awarded depends on the severity of thebug report, as well as the triviality of the patch you came up with.Put differently: while a one-line patch for a wishlist bug might getyou 1 point, I could award 100 points for a clean yet elaboratepatch to an important bug. Bonus points can be given if you providereasonable proof of thorough testing of your fix (you could usetest-driven development techniques… [4], also see [5]), ideally bya third party. Please be aware that bugs fixed by the reporterhim/herself will be especially scrutinised.

Anyway, there are no strict rules for the amount of points a patchwill get you. In fact, I reserve the right to announce the scoresonly after the end of the bug squashing period, and I will notanswer questions about scores, or address complaints from people whothink they have not received enough. However, I shall act asobjectively as possible, fair, and honest; for that, I give you myword. I realise this is sketchy and if you don't trust me on this,it's your choice not to participate — there is no point to argue atthis stage. If you have a better suggestion, I would be interestedin trying it the next time 'round. Maybe we can establish a goodscoring system for the future, but at the moment, no such systemexists.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate tospeak up (Reply-To set). Do note, however, that my tendonitis forcesme to take things slow. For this reason, I would like to apologisein advance should the evaluation of all your contributions extendinto the new year.

Thanks to Markus Wirtz of Open Source Press for supporting thisidea, and to Steve Langasek and Frank Lichtenheld for their advice.

– .''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debian.org> : :' : proud Debian developer and author: http://debiansystem.info `. `'` `- Debian – when you have better things to do than fixing a system Invalid/expired PGP (sub)keys? Use subkeys.pgp.net as keyserver! be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint. — mark twain